This semester, I’m taking some exciting biomedical engineering courses that directly apply to what I want to do after college. One of them is BME-416: Development and Regulation of Medical Products. The class meets once a week and we discuss the design, manufacturing, classification and quality procedures that go into the creation of medical devices. Recently, we had the opportunity …

Oftentimes, there's this stigma that if you study engineering it becomes your whole life between going to your math and science intensive classes and studying for them. I have found the opposite to be true. Every semester, I've had the opportunity to learn and explore subjects outside my major. Along with really cool classes in Viterbi I've taken Intro to ...

Happy Spring Break, everyone! I’m spending this week catching up on some well-deserved rest, but I’m also working hard on my research projects, which you can read about in my last blog post. We’re in the midst of college admissions season, and you might be deciding on where you want to spend the next chapter of your life. To make …

Hello, friends! First, let me start off by saying that if you haven’t read my recent post about how to obtain research at USC, you should go read that. This post will make much more sense after you have done so. So, my previous research post discussed how to find your own unique qualities you bring to the table in …

Happy day before spring break! Before I head out to Lake Tahoe for the weekend, I wanted to share some thoughts about an incredibly hot topic. Startups have been all the rage recently, as we can definitely see in that all-too-relevant meme: “Hey I have a startup idea, can you handle the development? I’ll handle the business side.” Especially being …

This past weekend I participated in ASBME’s Makeathon, an annual 48-hour hardware competition in which teams of four to five individuals collaborate to address a medical challenge. At 6 PM on Friday, the twelve participating teams were briefed on the prompt that would be consuming their time and efforts for the next two days. This year, teams were tasked with …

While it might be midterm season for some… it’s AthenaHacks season for me! (Just kidding, databases midterm on Monday!) Months and months of planning have led up to these 24 hours. This weekend, I’m running AthenaHacks, which is an all-female hackathon hosted here at USC! Last year, a couple of friends and I co-founded AthenaHacks, so it’s only our second …

Hey guys! It’s Explore season here at SC, and it’s been so much fun getting to meet some of you guys around campus!! Since coming to college, one of the most common questions I get asked is why I picked USC, so I thought I’d dedicate a post on what drew me to become a Trojan. Backstory, in high school …

When I was looking at different colleges, there were three primary factors that I looked for- strong academics, fun social life, and an enjoyable location. Usually schools excelled at one or two of these topics, but finding a place that I felt like I could really have all three was not an easy challenge. However, USC’s strong combination of these …

Now that I am on the other side of college decisions it's fun to look back and think about the whole process. For a good chunk of your junior and senior years of high school the college application process really takes over your life. You're worried about taking the SAT, writing good essays, researching different universities and their programs. Honestly, ...

It’s true; I really can’t. Just three years ago, I stepped foot onto USC’s campus for the second time, having been admitted to USC. (See little Nat below.) This week I'm doing a Q&A on my experience with USC's application process, student life, and resources. Q: Why did you ultimately decide to attend USC? A: This is a photo from …

Whether you are in Mechanical, Aerospace, or Astronautical engineering, and even if you aren't, you'll probably at one point hear about the dreaded Mechoptronics class. You'll probably hear that it's the hardest and most time consuming class AME and ASTE students have to take. You'll hear about the long report writing nights, the tough labs that press you for time, ...

Happy Friday! I’m writing this blog post during my least favorite class (who needs Operating Systems, right?), but let me tell you about my favorite class I’ve taken here at USC. During the spring semester of my sophomore year, I took a class called Exploring Ethnicity Through Film. It was exactly what you might expect from the title: we watched …

Hey guys, I have a major update for all of you: I have, once again, switched my major. This past week, I officially switched my engineering discipline from Chemical (Petroleum) Engineering to Industrial and Systems (Operations) Engineering with a minor in Petroleum Engineering. For those of you that know my storied history of switching majors within Viterbi, I realize this …

Do you all remember nap time in pre-school or kindergarten? While I can't give you descriptive details of preschool memories I do remember the infamous pre-school nap time. All the cool kids would stay up as an act of rebellion against being told to do something. I have to admit, I was one of those kids, but now, I ...

Hello there, research hopefuls! If you are coming to USC interested in research, look no further than this How-To Guide! I’m in the research spirit right now: I’ve been meeting back-to-back with different research partners, comprehending papers on neural networks, and preparing to present some research at the AAAI conference next weekend. So let me splurge my secrets on how …

If this headline doesn’t bring you in for the article, I don’t know what will. Yes it is very true I was able to watch a movie on the Beatles for “Homework” this week in my General Education class, The politics and culture of the 1960’s. This was a dream come true for me. I was able to sit back …